According to the British Medical Journal, “Not all foods have addictive potential.” Sounds like the writer had just struggled through a couscous salad. There’s some very non-addictive grub out there, and most of it’s good for you. Heaps of runner beans, great squidgy clods of spinach, bottomless bowls of vegetable soup, vast leaves of molar-defying kale – we’d all live for ever if that was all we ate. Or at least it would feel like that.
The same could not be said for spaghetti carbonara – it’s not very good for you, and yet I have often found eating it to be a test of endurance. The British version, that is. I’m sure in Italy it’s quite different: the thinnest of eggy coatings on perfect pasta with a subtle sprinkling of pancetta. But in the UK, it’s an eternity of creamy sauce melding into mushy coils of spaghetti, relieved only by the occasional oblong of packet ham glooping to the surface. The first mouthful hits the spot, but after that it’s like trying to consume a bog: however much you stuff in your mouth, the mixture just resettles and there’s the same amount left. You end up eating garlic bread alongside it just to break the monotony of texture.
